Confirmation

[koganbot]

Our friend Nichol was visiting and in the background I was playing the first Seo Taiji and Boys album and Nichol stopped midsentence and asked, "Who are you playing?" Hearing the ricochet electro beats, she said, "This is freestyle!" The mournful vocals entered as if to confirm this, and she added, "This sounds like the barrio."

Seo Taiji and Boys "이밤이 깊어 가지만" translated variously as "Deep Into The Night" and "Through Tonight Growing Late," 1992

Watch on YouTube

Seo Taiji and Boys "난 알아요" "Nan Arayo" ("I Know"), 1992

Watch on YouTube

So, someone who isn't me, without prodding, hears the freestyle connection too! You know, I keep pointing this out, how much K-pop draws on freestyle, and I wonder why more isn't made of it. "Nan Arayo," the second of the tracks I embedded, is often credited (on Wikip, anyway) as the song that created K-pop. Obviously, freestyle isn't the song's only source: there's hip-hop, new jack swing, metal. Then again, in the music press of the '80s, the northeast version of freestyle (New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia) was called "Latin hip-hop" at least as much as it was called "freestyle," as being to Hispanic culture what hip-hop was to black.* The freestyle beats themselves were frequently an elaboration on the electro hip-hop that Arthur Baker and John Robie created for DJ Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock." What's interesting is that, while in early '90s America freestyle was basically knocked off the radio and out of popular music by new jack swing and hip-hop and r&b, in Korea freestyle mixed together with new jack swing and hip-hop and r&b to form K-pop, and, while never separating out as a substyle, it's in K-pop songs to this day.**

Anyway, to be precise, Seo Taiji's melody starting at 1:13 of "Nan Arayo," and especially at 1:29 is total freestyle, and the backup there has the sort of flourishes that Elvin Molina and Mickey Garcia could have put on a Judy Torres record in 1987, and dreamy plinks that Tony Butler might have put on a Debbie Deb track in 1983. (You can hear them best at 1:56 of the album version.)

Listening now to this first Seo Taiji album, the rhythm feels more loose-limbed and free yet also actually far more precise than current K-pop does. This may just mean that Taiji and crew got the African American feel better than most of his progeny did. But there is almost a live sense, the music potentially careening all over, despite the use of preprogrammed beats and the aforementioned precision. So this is psychological, something I also remarked on back when embedding DJ DOC's quasi-Caribbean "Murphy's Law." K-pop back then felt as if it could draw on anything and go anywhere. Of course, with the Internet and all, music today draws easily on a much broader anything, while not feeling like it's moving anywhere much at all.*** (But, especially given my limited listening this year, of the many genres and nations I know nothing about, there ought to be some for which what I just said is exactly wrong.) Genres when young feel full of worlds of promise that actually actualized genres usually lack.

*Which is a gross oversimplification, of course. And anyway there were Hispanics in hip-hop itself from the get-go, in NYC.

**This is a simplification too. Not long after "Nan Arayo," Korean dance-pop duo Chuli and Miae sampled "Because Of You" by NY freestyle act the Cover Girls on their freestyle-Eurohouse amalgam "Why You," westernized dance pop already being a part of Korean popular music. I can't tell you if "Why You" was considered part of the same phenomenon as Seo Taiji or not. Seo Taiji and Boys abandoned freestyle by their third album, so I can't speak for freestyle's ongoing presence in South Korean pop music of the '90s, about which I know almost nothing. But if freestyle was ever gone, it certainly was back by the time I started listening to K-pop in the late '00s.

***I mean, Crayon Pop and ilk definitely have a fun sense of adventure, but it doesn't feel like an adventure that will actually take us to new lands or invent new topography.

Comments

[davidfrazer.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, K-Pendium's article on Nan Arayo doesn't say anything about freestyle but does detect new jack swing in the chorus, so perhaps they diagnose new jack swing where you hear freestyle.

[koganbot]

I'd say Jakob diagnoses New Jack Swing in the rhythm from the get-go, but also cites a New Edition–type keyboard line in the chorus; while I detect freestyle in the chorus's vocal melody. So by that account it's freestyle and new jack swing at once. Anyway, I'd say the rhythm is new jack swing starting right at the screeching-brake synth blast 9 seconds in on the album version (all times refer to that version rather than the slightly shorter one in the video I embedded), the sort of blasts that are something of a Teddy Riley signature (Riley being the premier new jack swing producer [but see "UPDATE" below]) — though I don't know enough about the style or its predecessors to really know who else was also using such blasts — as Jakob points out, Run-DMC's "I Like That" has got one, and they pretty obviously derive from James Brown's piercing, short horn blasts. But those blasts are also in freestyle; the Judy Torres track I linked builds to a blast 3 seconds in.

Back to "Nan Arayo," at about 16 seconds, right after the Flavor Flav sample and yet another blast, there's this sound that's like a human voice diced into scratches and notes and then tossed merrily into the air. For all I know it's a sample; it's possibly what Jakob means by "Detroit techno synth syncopation"; whatever it is, freestyle had a lot that's similar, all over, which I call "fucking around," e.g., at 4:06 of Cynthia's "Change On Me."

Then, at 1:31 of "Nan Arayo" we've got plinks accompanying the vocals, these plinks also making me think of freestyle (and as I said you get similar plinks naked at 1:56); I actually don't hear what sounds to Jakob like a New Edition keyboard line in the chorus, unless he means the plinks, but then I don't know New Edition very well. I suppose I need to take the New Edition train to Plinksville.

I'd describe the basic rhythm as r&b/northern hip-hop, as opposed to freestyle and Miami bass's electro-funk, and probably calling it new jack swing is accurate enough.* But the anything-goes rhythm elements on top do seem as much freestyle in spirit as hip-hop in spirit (i.e., they're both), which may have been what grabbed Nichol about them — though she was referring to "As The Night Goes On," to give it yet a third translation, none of the three being nearly as fun as Google Translate's "This Thing Tonight Deepening."

Anyway, (1) the element I'll go to bat for as being absolutely freestyle is the doleful melody, no question. (2) Contra Jakob, I think none of the rhythm 'n' plinks (and scratches and synth blasts and fuck-arounds) sound at all duct-taped or disjointed, or necessarily any more eclectic than what you'd get in freestyle and new jack swing of the time, though Taiji does indeed pile them on. Nor does the doomy synth Jakob identifies as Tangerine Dream melodrama. But (3) not contra Jakob, I think the rap, then the metal break, then the freestyle chorus do sound strung together rather than developing one from the other organically. That said, I've come to love the song, the melody truly delivering and therefore making the very energetic rest of the track feel right — the mournfulness of the melody manages to ground all the energy that precedes it, dances around it, and follows it.

[UPDATE: The blasts may be a Teddy Riley signature, but the song I link, Bell Biv DeVoe's "Poison," is produced by Elliot Straite, also known as Dr. Freeze.]

[koganbot]

*Honestly, I don't feel I comprehend the various genre and rhythm designations to be confident about that. Teddy Riley has more high snarey sounds and lots of tight short hurdles for his singers to jump over and pitched stops for them to dance around, if those metaphors make sense. (But my favorite Korean track of his, RaNia's "Masquerade", basically just wants to hammer us into submission.)

[koganbot]

Btw, what really makes Seo Taiji's eclecticism stand out as unique isn't the range of styles he packs into his music (Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney, DJ Afrika Bambaataa, and Teena Marie are at least as eclectic as he is, to name several who jump right to mind, and anyway whole gobs of the hip-hop and house of the time made a gigantic thing of their eclecticism, some also making a big thing of how disjunctive they were, e.g. M/A/R/R/S "Pump Up The Volume"), but that his secret love seems to be ProgRock. Or, anyway, he actually has a song called "Free Style" on his fourth album, the song having nothing to do with the genre freestyle but sounding like, I don't know, BritProg 1970 but with hip-hop rhythms underneath, and rap, and metal. It's way more accomplished and coherent than "Nan Arayo," but not as good.

[davidfrazer.livejournal.com]

Re Seo Taiji's eclecticism, here's a bombastic choral-orchestral-rock version of Nan Arayo from 2008. I was hoping the choir would burst into shouts of "East! Coast!" but alas no.

"East Coast!"

[koganbot]

And here's a new link for the bombastic choral-orchestral-rock version of Nan Arayo from 2008:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gwYA-p-EqY

[blokulla.livejournal.com]

The freestyle influence felt really explicit to me on Romeo's Lovesick, recently. I wonder if Sweetune think of their compositions on those terms? Anyway:

[koganbot]

Yeah. Unlike Taiji's, Romeo's freestyle is in the riffs. Reminds me a bit of "Over and Over" (I'm linking the Pajama Party version, which is brighter and better than the Brenda K. Starr original).

Four years ago (and five months late) I identified a SweeTune Kara track, "Jumping," as freestyle, the riffs quite obviously, but also the vocals. The drums not so much (freestyle tending towards quadruple-timed electro beats and fuckarounds, while this is fairly straightforward dance).

[koganbot]

Updated link for Pajama Party's "Over and Over":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq4H2UqUcww

Romeo's "Lovesick" link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIe47jQcnhc

[askbask.livejournal.com]

"I Feel You is Park Jin Young′s creation. It is inspired by the freestyle music that came out of the Latin American community in New York in the ′80s, featuring synth instruments and a syncopated base rhythm. "

[koganbot]

Here's the full thing (David already alerted me to the teaser):



I'd say it's more the Madonna end of freestyle than, say, the Lisette Melendez.

[koganbot]

Teaser link that David had linked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w62JoFqsdhM

Full version that I'd embedded in the lj comments (Wonder Girls "I Feel You"):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9QXQz6uE0M

A note from 2025

[koganbot]

I think Hyun Jin-young's music is just okay, but do note that a couple of years before Seo Taiji's breakthrough Hyun was already mixing rap with new jack swing rhythms and that he's using freestyle riffs, e.g., at 2:19. (Don't know the writers, producers, if he's one of them; he was signed to Lee Soo-man's agency.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBIwjicLKs8